Canon eos 300

Total Beginner Guide to the Canon EOS 300

To start, here’s a total beginner’s guide to the cameras.
1. Turn the camera off, if it was on, by turning the left-hand dial (looking from the back of the camera) to the red square marked L for “lock.”

2. Make sure the camera has working batteries installed. The battery cover is on the bottom of the camera.

3. Open thecamera back. The sliding release catch to the camera back is on the left side of the camera when viewed from the back.
4. Take a fresh roll of 35mm film and slot it into the space on the left. The exposed bit of film should protrude out to the right and the plastic cylindrical end should be at the bottom.
5. Pull the film tongue out as far as the orange mark on the right side ofthe camera. Be extremely careful not to poke the fragile shutter with your finger. (the shutter is the black rectangle with the sort of Venetian-blind panels in the middle of the camera)
6. Close the camera back. The camera will whir and wind for a half minute or so.
7. When the camera has finished prewinding, the film icon and the total number of shots available on the film willbe displayed on the top screen, meaning everything’s ready to go. [pic]If the flashing circle icon appears on the panel on the top then the film did not load correctly and you’ll probably have to open the camera back and line up the film with the orange mark.

8. Turn the left-hand dial to the green rectangle. [pic]This is the beginner mode.

9. Make sure the AF/MF switch onthe lens is set to AF, for autofocus. Remove the lens cap if necessary.
10. Look in the viewfinder and push the shutter release button halfway down. Whatever is in the very centre of the viewfinder should snap into focus.
11. If a green dot in the viewfinder blinks it means your subject is not in focus. Try refocusing again. You may need to find an object with a vertical line tofocus on.
12. Push the shutter release button all the way to take the picture.
13. Have fun!
Manual focussing.
There is usually a switch on the lens barrel marked AF/MF, or AF/M on older lenses. Turn this switch to MF or M and the camera will be in manual focus mode, as indicated by the MF symbol in the top-deck LCD panel. Then you can turn the focussing ring on the lens to focusmanually. Note that if your lens is a Canon EOS lens with full-time manual focussing (FTM) then you can adjust focus manually at any time that the autofocus motor isn’t actually working.
A handful of very old inexpensive EOS lenses lack this switch since they don’t support manual focussing. If that’s the case (such lenses are usually marked with the letter A, such as the EF 35-70mm f 3.5-4.5 A)you’re out of luck and can only use autofocus, I’m afraid. And a small number of specialized and expensive Canon EOS lenses (the MP-E 65mm macro and the three tilt-shift lenses) support manual-focus only and do not contain autofocus motors.
Main dial.
The small dial on the grip, under your right index finger and next to the shutter release button, is the main input dial. It’s used for adjustingvarious camera settings.
Command (mode) dial.
The primary control knob on the camera, located on the left side of the top deck, (looking from the back) and marked with a variety of letters and icons. It doesn’t have a locking mechanism, so it’s possible to power up the camera accidentally by bumping the dial.
Lock mode (L).
The red L mode means “off” in Canon parlance. In this position there’s norisk of taking a photo accidentally. You’ll notice that the top deck LCD panel displays the number of shots left on the roll if the camera is loaded with film. This obviously takes power, but don’t worry about draining the battery. Just as LCD wristwatches can run for ages on a single tiny battery the camera can display the frame count information for quite a long time. I would only remove the...